By Mary Williams
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Driving out to the Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio
Saturday was like a pilgrimage to a secret, foreign land.
First the L.A. radio stations started to get fuzzy out along the
10 freeway, a sure sign that the venturer was leaving home
territory. Then there were those fields of majestic three-pronged
windmills just west of Palm Springs. Standing in neat rows by the
road and perched atop the foothills, they made the desert look like
the surface of an alien planet. Soon the freeway signs started to
refer to “other desert cities,” rather than “Palm
Springs,” indicating that the driver was entering the land of
the unknown.
Once festival-goers left the freeway, inched along the
single-file line of cars to the parking lot and made it through
security, they entered the promised land ““ the music and arts
festival itself.
On the sprawling lawn of the Empire Polo Field, where the
concert is annually held, enormous white tents were set up,
interspersed with sculptures and milling people.
A walk through the grounds took the festival-goer past pockets
of people immersed in different aspects of the event. A large metal
interactive sculpture was constantly surrounded by a dozen people
banging away on makeshift percussion instruments. A carousel of
bicycles spun around as its riders pedaled rapidly. The line into
the beer garden stayed long throughout the day and night, and
venders sold everything from pacifiers to T-shirts and henna
tattoos.
And, of course, there was the music. Bjork was one of the most
popular performers there, with her set being second to last on the
main stage. She garnered a crowd so large the audience members in
its far reaches were hearing fragments of the Beta Band and
Jurassic 5 mixed in with Bjork, her beats and her string
section.
As large as it was, the crowd was won over by Bjork’s
personality. Even though a view of the Icelandic singer was often
hard to get, listeners cheered whenever she would dance across the
stage, and when she returned for an encore with a large green shell
attached to her dress, which looked like a lettuce garnish
extending from over her head to the ground.
The Chemical Brothers closed Saturday’s show, avoiding
songs like “Setting Sun,” “Let Forever Be”
and “Where Do I Begin,” which rely on guest singers,
even though those are among their best tracks. It’s
disappointing that Noel Gallagher, a collaborator on the first two
songs, didn’t make an appearance even though his band, Oasis,
was performing at the festival the following day.
The group kept the crowd dancing nonstop, even though many of
the audience members had been at the festival for nearly 12 hours
and were no doubt exhausted.
Those 12 hours were filled with highlights provided by a diverse
array of musicians. KRS-One got the main stage warmed up with his
early 2 p.m. slot. He pitted one side of the crowd against the
other, asking them to shout, “The real hip-hop is over
here,” in between socially conscious rhymes.
G Love and Special Sauce put on a fun set that got the crowd
gently dancing. Jack Johnson did the same, and the similarities
between the two were highlighted when Johnson invited G Love
onstage to play a few songs with him, including G Love’s hit
“Rodeo Clowns.”
The Beta Band also kept people moving, but their well-crafted
songs didn’t translate as well to the stage as was hoped.
Part of the problem was the awful mix, which had the singer’s
voice too low and the bass guitar too high.
The two tents, which hosted artists including Dan the Automator,
Z-Trip, Groove Armada and Sasha and Digweed, had more of a party
atmosphere. The Sahara tent, host to the latter two groups, had a
laser light show projected onto circular screens suspended from the
ceiling, which kept the DJs visually interesting.
Oscillating from the tents to the outdoor stages, members of the
crowd tried to divide their time among competing acts. Sasha and
Digweed, for example, was up against the Chemical Brothers, and
Jurassic 5 played at the same time as Bjork.
Having completed the pilgrimage and seen as much as they could
see, the festival-goers left tired, dusty, sunburned and sore, some
only to return the next day.